dragon

I had written some real muse-y stuff earlier this week, but now it comes to it and I’m just like nah, not feeling that for today. So let’s start off strong and keep it light with some good cat pictures because it’s hard to go wrong with cat pictures.

How I feel

I just want to snuggle

This week, we had some incredible weather. Like, actually really hot. Now, the temperatures themselves were not insane–I think the highest high for here was 25. But understand that in Ireland, the hot feels hotter and the cold feels colder. Not sure how of why, but others I’ve spoken to about it agree. But fear not, we’ve had some rain and plenty of clouds too because Ireland.

In other news, ‘madrona’ is not apparently the common name for that tree in areas generally outside of Washington and Oregon. Additionally, the species that we have is only found along the coast of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and around Vancouver Island. Most other species are Mediterranean or other hot places, like Mexico. Who knew? I certainly didn’t. It’s also in the same family as cranberries, huckleberries, rhododendron, and heather. Science is weird.

Confession time. So I acknowledge it to be a little strange and perhaps a bit outside of my expected behavior, but this year I have started watching vlogs on YouTube and it’s been great. The one I follow most consistently is a British guy who, oddly enough, is like a fashion somebody. Not that fashion is odd (though it kind of is) mostly just that I don’t care for it at all. Anyway, it’s so strange seeing all these people who are fairly famous because of YouTube and it’s like a whole world. A little crazy. But I’ve somehow gotten into it and I don’t care who knows it. You basically just follow them around in daily life and they’re not generally too exciting (though they occasionally do like meet important people or do fancy things). It’s maybe a trifle voyeuristic, but there you have it.

I think I stumbled into it in the search of videos of Welsh people because Welsh accents are my favorite. They’re the first time I’ve heard people speaking English and understood the way people are sometimes described in books as having a singsong like quality to their speech. It’s delightful.

I’m also currently on my longest streak on Duolingo (39 days) for both German and Russian. So here’s some German and Russian examples from Duolingo itself, because this whole post has been in English and variety is the spice of life 😉

Die Freundin zeigt ihre Haare.

Твой брат когда-нибудь был на этой горе?

Those sentences are just random ones from my training today, they have no particular significance. They’re pretty mundane, though sometimes Duolingo gets a little creepy. Other times, it’s just delightful–one of the first sentences I learned in Welsh on Duolingo is ‘I am a dragon.’